A 37-year-old Little Rock man, already serving a 15-year sentence for inflicting brain-damaging injuries on a fellow prisoner, accepted a 30-year, no-parole term Monday for first-degree murder.
Ronnie Juan Hervey pleaded guilty Monday in exchange for the sentence that will keep him behind bars until he is 64 years old, with credit for the almost three years he has been in jail awaiting trial.
Hervey, represented by attorney Tom Devine, had been scheduled to stand trial today before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims, and faced a potential life sentence.
Hervey is not eligible for parole because he is a violent, habitual offender.
The murder sentence will run concurrently with the 15-year term he accepted in October when he pleaded guilty to first-degree battery for the May 2014 attack on fellow inmate Darrell Dean at the Pulaski County jail.
Hervey had been jailed about a month on the murder charge when he beat Dean so badly in the jail yard that police worried he would die.
Authorities said Hervey inflicted injuries that induced seizure disorder in Dean and forced him to use a walker.
Hervey was arrested in the April 2014 slaying of Martin Coleman Henderson a day after the 38-year-old Henderson was found shot to death in the front doorway of a Rinke Road home.
Deputy prosecutor Jill Kamps told the judge Monday that at least one witness had been in the home when Henderson was shot, and that he was seen leaving the residence on security video.
Additionally, a bullet casing found at the crime scene matched another shooting in which Hervey had been suspected, she said.
According to police reports, the homeowner, Jeremy Adams, found Henderson's body after a female guest at the house called to say Henderson was dead.
Adams told police that he wasn't at home when Henderson was shot.
The woman who was there texted him that a man named "100," whom police were able to identify as Hervey, was at the house with her and Henderson, Adams said.
The woman later called Adams back to say that Henderson was dead and that she'd crawled out a window to get out of the house, court filings show.
Detectives found Hervey at the North Little Rock parole office, where he was arrested.
In custody, Hervey told police that he uses the nickname 100 and had been at the house with Henderson. They had drunk some beer together, he said.
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Hervey said two masked men dressed all in black stormed the home and that they shot Henderson, according to police reports.
Hervey said he left the residence after the shooting but did not call 911.
Police reported another shooting on the same Rinke Road property almost nine months later. No charges have been filed in that case, and authorities said there appeared to be no connection to the Henderson slaying.
In January 2015, Deon Andre "Cowboy" Lindsey, 44, was found wounded in front of a barn on the property. He was covered with a bloody sheet and told officers that he didn't know who had shot him, according to police reports.
He'd been inside the house when a woman asked him to come outside, he said. When he did, someone started shooting at him.
He had been shot four times, twice in the stomach and once each in the hip and left arm, according to police reports.
A witness inside the house reported hearing six gunshots before going outside and finding Lindsey. He told police that he'd seen the assailant running away, according to the reports.
Metro on 12/13/2016